Recreated Fire
by Mai Kusakabe
Summary: Harry Potter has always dreamed about a dark haired boy, his thrilling life and adventures. When his Hogwarts letter arrives, he discovers a new, magical world, and that not everything is what it seems to be, all in the form of a mythical bird that insists on befriending him. MarcoAce.
1. Chapter 1

Hello :)

I've wanted to write a Harry Potter crossover for some time now, and I finally gota an idea I liked for it.

Before anything else, you're warned that this story, though it'll take a while to get there as we begin in first year, is yaoi, slash, male x male or whatever else you want to call it. If you don't like it, please just leave, no one forces you to read. If you do like it, then I hope you like my story as well ^^

It's Marco/Ace, and I swear there's no bestiality in here. The story will diverge somewhat from canon as we advance.

The updates won't be too frequent, as I have other stories to work on aside from this one, but I promise somewhat long chapters (and this one is long compared to what I usually write) to compensate.

This is being beta read by **The Red Harlequin On The Luna**, who was kind enough not to murder me for throwing the story at her out of nowhere.

_Luna: -blows kisshus- Helloooo_

**Disclaimer:** Anything you recognize belongs either to Eiichiro Oda or to J.K. Rowling. I don't make any money out of this, and couldn't pay if I was sued for writing this.

Now, this chapter is the introduction. I tried to go fast over what we already know so we can get into the story itself as soon as possible.

* * *

**Chapter 1: The boy who dreamed**

"_From now on, we're brothers!"_

Harry Potter woke up to the racket that accompanied his cousin stomping loudly and heavily down the stairs and he groaned. It couldn't be too early, as Dudley probably didn't even know the possibility of waking early during the summer holidays existed, but he had been asleep and, taking advantage of his wonderfully chore-free day, Harry had wanted to sleep in as much as possible. Alright, so it wasn't as much a chore-free day as it was the second day of the three he would spend not allowed to leave his closet for more than two five minute visits to the bathroom as a consequence of his last stunt.

But, seriously, it wasn't as if he could have avoided it. He didn't care that his Aunt and Uncle always thought anything that happened was his fault, or that they believed whatever nonsense Dudley whined about. He wasn't going to let his whale of a cousin chase him around with his stupid goons just because if he fought back Uncle Vernon would whack him over the head and stuff him in the closet for the next few days. He much preferred to fight back and get stuck here a couple of days.

And that's why, when Dudley decided to try again his 'Harry Hunting', Harry had beaten his friends into a crying mess of preteen idiots. He had been careful, however, not to touch Dudley, as he didn't want to have a repeat of what happened the last time he had tried, but the message had been clear: by the time Harry was done with his friends, his cousin was a trembling mess. As always. Anybody would expect that, after the spectacular failures that all the previous attempts at that game had been, those idiots would have learned the lesson and leave him alone. But then, no smart guy would be Dudley's friend, so Harry guessed it made sense they agreed to help every time Dudley decided to try.

After every attempt, it always took a longer time for the next one to happen.

That explained why Harry was confined to his cupboard right now. These punishments, in his opinion, were both a curse and a blessing.

The curse took two forms. The first one was that Harry liked to be outside, he really did. There he could run around, climb trees and mock-fight with the air as much as he wanted.

When he was little, he used to fight against the neighbourhood's kids, though it would be more accurate to say that the children thought the weird, poorly dressed boy no one cared about would be a good target for her taunts and Harry proved them how sorely mistaken they were almost every time. There had been only a couple of exceptions where he had lost, and that had been when a group of at least three years older kids picked on him, but that had been before. Harry hadn't lost in two whole years, and by now the only ones who occasionally attempted to fight him were Dudley's gang of morons. The others stayed well away from him, calling him a monster or other names but too terrified of his strength to do more than glower when they thought Harry wasn't looking.

Then there was the second reason, that was by far the biggest inconvenience in Harry's opinion: no food. The Dursleys weren't exactly generous with the amount of food they gave him, and even less with its quality, but if Harry could go out, he could procure food of his own, even if he had to resort to eating and then running away or, as he had learned when he became older, pickpocket from unsuspecting passersby. After all, there were only so many restaurants in the area, and with how much he ate, Harry would run out of places to go if he kept the other practice up.

The good part of these punishments, though, was that he wasn't expected to do any chores, and consequentially could spend as much time as he wanted sleeping. Harry loved to sleep. Since he could remember, he had always had very interesting dreams. He couldn't remember them in much detail, though they became easier to remember as he grew older. The dreams were a strange thing that happened to him —perhaps even more than his hair growing on his own, Dudley's Gameboy catching fire when he was taunting Harry about how he would never let him play or appearing on the roof of the school, but luckily, contrary to those, no one knew about these dreams— and one he enjoyed immensely. They were thrilling, showing things he couldn't believe his mind could come up to. Now, Harry was no idiot, —it didn't matter that his Aunt and Uncle didn't want him to have better grades that Dudley and so his academic performance sucked— but he was amazed his brain had created such a complex world.

Because, despite all the things he couldn't remember once he woke up, he knew it was a complex world.

All the dreams seemed to be related, from the first one he had had, there were many recurring characters —the boy with the straw hat, the giant old man, the blond with the pineapple hair— he could connect the events of some dreams to others, they seemed to be all placed in the same world and then, of course, there was _his_ character.

Because he was always the same person in these dreams, indifferently if at the dream he was ten or nineteen, there was always the freckled boy with dark hair. Now, Harry had black hair, and freckles that his Aunt stared at curiously from time to time, but his hair was much more of a rat's nest than the one in the dream, and he wasn't nearly as muscled as the kid, not even at age ten, despite all the chores he was forced to do and all the exercise he managed to fit in his free time —not that he could do much exercise while school was on, classes and chores took up almost all of his time then. And he had those stupid glasses.

Harry liked to think that, once he grew up he would be as tall and strong as that guy was. He would love to see Uncle Vernon try to get his hands on the seventeen years old man that had left the island in a small boat to go fulfil his dream.

If only he could remember that boy's name... For some reason, despite how many times it was said throughout the dreams, it was one of the things he could never remember once he woke up.

Harry heard the front door slam closed, a signal that Dudley had left, and rolled on the small cot that acted as his bed. Mere moments later he was fast asleep.

* * *

Harry could have slapped himself for letting his stupid cousin see the letter he had received. Not even seeing Uncle Vernon's unhealthy purple face and Aunt Petunia almost fainting had been worth not knowing what it said. Especially because of those reactions. It had to be very good to warrant them. What had followed had only increased Harry's desire to read them.

The letters had kept coming, more and more every time and in a stranger way as time went by, but unfortunately Harry hadn't been able to get his hands on one. Not even fleeing had served to stop them, for the letters had followed, as if they magically —and wouldn't his relatives hate that thought— knew where to find them. Him. Not only the place, but the _exact_ place.

Where he slept.

That was another reason Harry liked those letters: after they arrived, the Dursleys had panicked at the thought that someone knew where he slept and gave him Dudley's second bedroom. Dudley hadn't been happy, it had been great to witness one of his epic temper tantrums failing like that.

But now, amusement aside, things had gone a little too far. Harry liked the ocean, it reminded him of his dreams and how the boy in them had loved it, but being in a shack in the middle of the water during a storm was a little too much even for him.

Oh, and it was about to be his birthday.

Eleven years old, reached during a potentially deadly excursion to flee a horde of flying letters his relatives didn't want him to read. He grinned. The boy would have loved it and that made Harry love it. He felt the boy was a part of himself, after all.

Mere minutes before his birthday, loud sounds, too loud to belong to the raging storm outside, began to be heard.

* * *

Harry spent over twenty minutes laughing so hard it was lucky for him Hagrid didn't mind, because he wouldn't have been able to stop.

That had been _great_.

Seeing his relatives so terrified, Dudley's _tail_, meeting Hagrid —who seemed really nice despite certain others' reactions to him— and getting a cake had been a perfect birthday present. His first cake, of which nothing remained by now.

Oh, and he was a wizard.

Hagrid had been surprised when, after discovering how the Dursleys had tried to hide the truth from him, Harry hadn't been either amazed or incredulous, instead taking it in stride. But, seriously, despite his relatives' loud claims that such thing as magic didn't exist, he would have to be daft to not realize something was off with all the stuff that happened to him. Besides, he had spent his whole life dreaming about Devil Fruits, magic wasn't so surprising after that.

There had been a downside to this night, of course. It had been a relief to know that his relatives had lied and his parents hadn't died in a car crash, but the knowledge that a power-hungry madman had killed them hadn't settled well in him. For some reason he couldn't place, it brought a deep sense of hatred towards that Voldemort guy, and he regretted he had already killed him as a baby, because he would have liked to get his hands on him now.

Shaking his head to get rid of those dark thoughts, Harry laid back and attempted to sleep. It was a happy day now, not only because it was his birthday, but because he was a wizard and would be leaving the Dursleys' house for the whole school year.

He idly wondered if he would have to confiscate the contents of some pockets to be able to pay for his school supplies.

* * *

As it happened, no stealing was required for his shopping trip to Diagon Alley. He was loaded, as he soon discovered once Hagrid bought him to Gringotts. The goblin who accompanied them, Griphook, had directed a strange look at him when Harry very nearly salivated at the sight of the gold mounds in his vault. It was a treasure! And it could pay for a lot of food. But no, Harry only took a reasonable amount, deciding he would try to keep the money for important things —he had learned the value of saving when the freckled boy and Sabo had collected all that treasure, though in that case it had been for naught at the end— and left, trying to discover what Hagrid had collected from that other vault to no avail. At least the trips on the carts were funny. Harry had laughed the whole way, that action earning him strange looks from both Griphook and Hagrid.

That had raised his mood back to what it had been the night before, and he was glad for it. Before going to the bank they had had to pass through a pub to get to the magical shop street —that had a lot of cool shops— and there had been an _incident_.

When Hagrid had told him he was famous the night before, Harry hadn't been prepared for what it truly meant. It wasn't just that he was famous, those people _worshipped him_. Like they would to some kind of hero. Harry had already guessed his fame wouldn't have anything to do with how the freckled boy, once he became a pirate, was so infamous, but that... He hadn't liked it, had made him feel extremely uncomfortable. He hoped that not everybody would react like that, but didn't put much faith into it.

Following with the shopping trip, after Gringotts —he had chuckled at the warning in the door and wondered what the goblins would think of his dreams— they had gone to get his uniform, and there Harry had met a posh blond kid he wasn't looking forward to meeting again. At least he had learned some things, like Quidditch —Hagrid had later explained it was a popular sport, and Harry thought he would like to try it, even more for the flying part— or the fact that the school was divided into houses. If that boy was anything to go by, Harry doubted he would like being in Slytherin, but he might be wrong and the boy was not an example of how the people in that house were, who knew.

He had also got the impression that the magical world was as prejudiced as what wizards called the muggle world, both from the other boy's comment about wizards coming from muggle families and Hagrid's comments about Slytherins.

The visit to the book store was uneventful, and Harry browsed some spells books that caught his attention, but decided to wait to know a little of how to cast magic before buying anything. That Hagrid told him he couldn't use magic outside of school had probably influenced him on that decision.

After that he bought his cauldron and scales —and ogled the gold cauldron until Hagrid dragged him away, though he wouldn't have spent money on something like that— and headed to the apothecary, a place that made Aunt Petunia's excessive amount of cleaning supplies smell like heaven.

The ingredients sold there, however, were interesting. He spent his time there browsing the inventory, and through that discovered that animals he thought mythical, such as unicorns, were real. He wondered if phoenixes existed, too.

On their way to the wand shop, Hagrid said he would buy him a birthday present. Harry knew he should have acted modest, assuring the man it wasn't necessary, but instead he launched himself at the supposed giant —that looked short in comparison to many people Harry had dreamed of, like Pops— thanking him profusely. He didn't care what the present would be, because it would be his first real present, and that made it great.

His present turned out to be an owl, something Hagrid thought every boy wanted to have and that would be useful, as owls were used to send letters in the wizarding world.

Much to the man's horror, however, Harry named his new owl Stefan, unaware at the time that said owl was female, and refused to listen to Hagrid's stammered suggestion that he could wait and get a good name from his history textbook or something. The owl was white, and Harry remembered Whitebeard having a white dog with his same moustache. Harry might not be able to get the owl to grow a moustache, but she was white and so he had named her Stefan. He had never been good at telling the gender of an animal, and Hagrid had been too gobsmacked by the name —for an owl!—to notice either.

The visit to the wand shop was plain strange and somewhat unnerving. Ollivander, the wand maker, made Harry nervous, but he also liked it. Not the part where his new wand was the brother of Voldemort's wand, that fact disturbed him more than anything else, but his wand's core was a _phoenix feather_. Phoenixes were real, and he now owned the proof of it. He barely resisted the urge to ask if they were blue.

Also, Ollivander had said Harry would do great things. He had no intention of turning into a second Voldemort or anything like that, related wands or not, but he hoped that meant he would live many adventures.

That would be great.

Finally they went to eat at the Leaky Cauldron, and Harry did his best to ignore the stares directed his way, pleased when people finally averted their eyes. It might have had something to do with the way he wolfed down all the food he had ordered —after all the Dursleys hadn't given him any manners lessons and all he knew was from things he had seen in his dreams and pirates weren't exactly famous for their dreams— but he didn't care as long as they stopped watching his every move.

* * *

His last month at the Dursleys' was great. Dudley was terrified of him, which meant he stayed clear of him and didn't try anything, while his Aunt and Uncle were both scared and furious, and had taken to ignoring him. There had been no chores and no going back to the cupboard, which meant Harry had had the whole month for himself.

The dreams had continued: he had seen the freckled boy play and train with Sabo and Luffy, set sail to pursue his dreams, meet some of his first crewmembers, how he had tried to kill Whitebeard one of so many times, the party the crew threw when he finally agreed to join them... This month's dreams had been all good, with none of the sad moments of the boy's life that Harry had dreamt of. The time he had learned why Sabo had disappeared at some point when the boy was ten, Harry had been eight, and felt glad of being locked in his cupboard, because he had spent the whole day crying.

Now that he knew magic was real, Harry had tried to figure out if those dreams had any meaning besides that, dreams, but he hadn't been able to come up with anything that didn't sound ridiculous and his textbooks —that he had browsed mostly to see what kind of magic he would be learning— hadn't helped at all.

For the most part, though, Harry spent his time outside, running around, climbing trees, using the park's slide and swings in ways that they weren't meant to be used, and anything else that came to mind.

When September 1st arrived, Harry was so excited he would have spent the whole night before jumping around if it wasn't because he knew the Dursleys would kill him. Or not take him to King's Cross, which would be worse.

* * *

Harry had barely resisted from punching Uncle Vernon for his obvious mocking attitude since he heard the platform's name.

The only thing that made him control himself was that he knew it had to be something magical, and so he headed for platforms nine and ten and began to search for anyone who looked magical. He had noticed at Diagon Alley how different their clothes were.

It didn't take long.

His attention was drawn to a big group of redheads that walked close to him, and he caught the word 'muggle' in what the woman with them, obviously the mother, was saying.

Harry stood back to look at what they did and watched, fascinated, as first the boy that had to be the oldest —and there were four boys and a girl, a lot of kids for a family— disappeared through the wall separating platforms nine and ten, followed by two identical, slightly younger boys.

Convinced that it had to be what he had been looking for, he approached the woman.

"Excuse me, ma'am."

"Hello, dear," she said, "First year at Hogwarts, right? Ron is also new." She pointed to the last of her sons, redheaded like all the others, he was a gangly boy, taller than Harry and with freckles. Harry grinned at him in greeting.

"Yeah. Is that the platform?" He asked, signalling to the wall with his head. The woman smiled at him.

"Yes. You just have to walk up to it to cross to platform 9¾. Why don't you go before Ron?"

Harry grinned at her in thanks, turned to push his trolley forward and, at the last moment before moving, he decided to run at it instead of walking. When he passed through the wall, as if it hadn't even been there, he had taken so much impulse it was a miracle he managed to stop himself before he ran a woman over. The woman glared at him and walked away.

In this new platform, where almost everybody he could see was wearing wizards' robes instead of muggle clothes, was a huge, bright red steam train. He grinned.

Ignoring the conversations around, the families parting for the school year and the friends meeting again after the summer, Harry pushed his trolley forward until he found a compartment that wasn't already full with students. He stopped in front of one almost at the end of the train, took Stefan's cage —he had debated on calling her Stefanie after discovering his mistake but finally decided against it— and carried it into the compartment before coming back to take his trunk. He grinned when he could lift it, having noticed how the other kinds that looked his age seemed to need help, and dropped it onto the floor with a heavy sigh once it was inside. He pushed it into a corner, moved Stefan's cage to one of the seats and he himself sat down next to it.

Through the open door Harry watched with amusement the family of redheads saying goodbye to their mother. Apparently, the older one was a prefect, whatever that was, and the twins were poking fun at him. They sounded amusing, maybe he could become friends with them later. When the mother started to warn them about everything she didn't want to hear they had done, Harry choked in an attempt not to laugh and decided he would like those two.

The train whistled and the boys hurried to climb in. Harry lost himself in the sight of the station growing smaller and smaller, and then the train turned and he was looking at the houses passing at great speed by the window.

He turned when the door to his compartment opened, and saw the younger red haired boy, Ron, standing there awkwardly.

"Is someone sitting here? All other compartments are full."

Harry shook his head and the boy came in, sitting down in the opposite seat. They stayed silent for a moment until the twin brothers came in to tell their younger brother they would go somewhere else.

Then something that Harry would soon grow to hate happened. One of them noticed his scar when he turned to introduce himself. Fred. Fred and George Weasley. At least they hadn't fawned over him as much as the people in the Leaky Cauldron.

When the two older boys left, Harry was left with an even more awkward Ron who now seemed fascinated by him, asking incomplete questions about his scar. When Harry told him he only remembered a green light, they lapsed into a silence. The dark haired boy, however, wasn't about to waste his chance to discover some more about the wizarding world before school started, and so decided to ask Ron Weasley about it. The conversation, however, turned to the boy's family. Harry was fascinated to hear what a wizarding family was like. He soon learned, though Ron tried not to say it, that they didn't have much money and the boy was bitter about not having anything new.

Harry, up until his visit to Diagon Alley, had never had anything new either, and he could sympathize. He hated Dudley's cast-offs.

Over an hour into the conversation, a cart full of food came by. Ron refused to buy anything but Harry, both with his usual hunger and curiosity for magical food, bought some of everything, and spent the following time eating with Ron. He even got one of the boy's sandwiches in exchange for some sweets. Harry would have given them to him either way, but he wasn't stupid enough to refuse free food.

The magical food was very interesting —Harry was beginning to suspect he could find almost anything in this world if he looked hard enough— and he even got his first look at Hogwarts' headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, in the form of the card from a chocolate frog.

He also meet a bossy girl by the name of Hermione Granger who was looking for a boy's toad —the boy had been over asking if they had seen it, too— and, though Ron didn't like her much, Harry thought she didn't necessarily have to be bad. Alright, he hadn't liked her tirade about her having read everything about him, but she had just looked like an extremely nervous girl who had tried to learn as much as possible from this new world that had revealed itself to her.

If Harry cared about fitting in, he would probably have done something similar. Not spouting out all the information when it wasn't needed, but learned it nonetheless.

Their conversation went back to Ron's family and the wizarding world in general until they were interrupted again. This time by the blond kid from the clothes store and this time, contrary to what had happened with Hermione, Harry did _not_ like him. At all. He hated that people tried to tell him what he could and couldn't do, he hated prejudiced people —he understood most people, Harry himself included, were somewhat prejudiced, but this brat had showed in two minutes his life was reigned by his prejudices— and he didn't like cowards. That kid was everything wrapped in a pale, posh package, as proved when he squealed and ran away because Ron's _rat_ attacked him.

Incidentally, that attack was the reason why Harry didn't punch him.

Soon after, they changed into their school uniforms and the train arrived at its destination. There was Hagrid, waiting for the first years, and they were soon divided in groups of four to climb small boats —Harry grinned at being on the water— to sail to Hogwarts.

When his eyes fell on the magnificent castle, Harry's grin widened until it almost hurt his cheeks. The place, that looked magnificent, screamed excitement and adventure.

He couldn't wait to be there.

* * *

There had been a lot of speculation, fear and nerves about the selection —not to mention the ghosts that had come to greet them, that had interested Harry much more—, and Harry felt glad when the doors to the Great Hall finally opened and they entered following professor McGonagall, who had given them a quick overview of the school's structure.

The Great Hall was magnificent, there were four long tables filled with students, a fifth one at the front where the staff sat, it was illuminated by thousands of floating candles and the high ceiling showed the sky outside. He heard Hermione Granger say it was enchanted.

The professor placed a stool on the floor and on top of it a worn pointy hat. Harry jumped when the hat moved and began to sing. He hadn't expected _that_.

When the song was over, professor McGonagall began to call the students, and not even when it became clear they only had to put the hat on to be sorted did they calm. Most looked as if they were walking to their execution.

Harry soon grew tired of watching frightened students sitting there and scurrying off to their tables as soon as the hat yelled their house, and he let his eyes roam over the hall, more precisely at the head table, the one that was in front of the first years.

His eyes moved over every face, his eyes stopping halfway through them as they fell on a wizened man he recognized as Albus Dumbledore. The man's eyes _twinkled_, and he smiled at Harry when he noticed the boy looking at him. He looked away to continue his evaluation of the professors when his eyes fell on the top of the high chair where the headmaster was sitting.

There, standing on the seat and eyes looking straight at him was a bird. A magnificent bird of red feathers that seemed to glow and that Harry recognized, remembering it from his book on magical animals, as a phoenix. He swallowed.

"Potter, Harry!"

**To be continued**

* * *

Whew, I managed to reach the sorting here, that was my intention.

I'm not sorry about changing Hedwig's name. In case someone doesn't know, Oda said in a SBS that Whitebeard had a dog called Stefan with his same moustache (it was a joke, but I couldn't resist.)

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, let me know what you think in a review :D


	2. Chapter 2

It just got past midnight here and it's now May 20, which means it's my birthday :D (and I feel old now.) Last year I celebrated it by posting a lot of updates at the same time, and this year I've decided to do the same because I don't usually receive many birthday presents (and even less in person) and reviews make me happy, so I want them :D

I wasn't going to update this so soon, but I finished the chapter soon after the first one and decided to add this story to my other birthday updates :)

Beta-read by The Red Harlequin On The Luna

* * *

**Chapter 2: The mythical bird**

"Potter, Harry!"

Harry snapped back to attention when his name was heard throughout the Great Hall, and he walked forward. Contrary to his future classmates, however, he made it a point not to hurry toward the hat. It wasn't as if he was walking up to his execution.

That, however, gave him plenty of time to hear the whispers that surged around him.

"_Potter_, did she say?"

"_That _Harry Potter?"

Yes, Harry was beginning to really hate those reactions.

He sat down on the stool, and professor McGonagall placed the hat on his head, it being so big that it covered his eyes.

"_Hmm_," Harry almost jumped in place when he heard that voice. "W_hat an interesting mind you have here. I hadn't had such a complicated case in a very long time. Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There's talent, oh my goodness, yes — and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting… So where shall I put you?_"

Harry, remembering that Malfoy boy and his two thugs had gone to Slytherin, began to repeat in his head that he didn't want to go there, as he didn't feel like dealing with them in a daily basis.

"_Not Slytherin, eh?_" said what had to be the hat. Though, how a hat could speak, Harry didn't know. Devil Fruit, perhaps? "_No, not a Devil Fruit. I hadn't heard that term in many years. You are certainly a curious case. Are you sure you don't want to go to Slytherin?_" Harry conjured up a made up image of the freckled boy burning the hat. "_I'll take that as a no. It's a pity, you could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that." He repeated the thought, adding in a furious 'NO' for good measure. "No? Well, if you're sure — better be GRYFFINDOR!_"

A loud, almost deafening cheer burst from said table after the hat yelled the House's name, and Harry took the hat off, handed it to the professor, who for some reason smiled at him, and headed in the direction of his new table. He shook the hand of the oldest redhead —his name was Percy?— and sat down, ignoring all the ruckus around him that apparently centred on having _Harry Potter_ in their house, only paying attention when the ghost patted his arm, and that was more due to the shiver the action sent through his body than anything else.

Once he was sitting down, the cheers still going around in the table, Harry looked back up at the Head Table, eyes going to fall on the phoenix. He blinked. Was the bird _clapping_ with its wings?

His attention went back to the sorting when he heard Ron's name, and Harry smiled and joined the cheers when his new friend was sent to Gryffindor just like him.

After him, there was only one more student left, then the Headmaster stood up and gave a short speech that had Harry wondering if his brain was missing something. He rapidly discarded it from his thoughts, however, when all sorts of delicious-looking foods materialized on the table out of nowhere.

It is possible that some of his new classmates tried to talk to him, or maybe they didn't, Harry couldn't tell because he was too busy stuffing his face with food. He was so absorbed in the novelty of being able to eat as much as he wanted without having to keep an eye out to make sure his escape route was open that he didn't notice the strange looks his table manners —more precisely his lack of them— garnered him, and barely spared a glance when the House's ghost —whose name he would later learn was Nearly Headless Nick— pulled his head to the side to show the students how he wasn't completely headless.

When the food on the table was replaced by desserts, Harry was happy to indulge in them, but when the desserts, too, disappeared, he crossed his arms and looked sulkily up at the Head Table when the headmaster rose to speak. His eyes moved to look behind the man's shoulder, where the bird still stood —and Harry had the strange feeling it was looking at him— and he only half-listened to the old man.

A forbidden forest —he made a mental note to sneak out at some point—, apparently it was forbidden to use magic in the corridors and Harry seriously doubted anyone followed that rule, something about Quidditch he didn't care about because he couldn't play this year, and a corridor where anyone who entered would die. Now _that_ got his attention, and his eyes moved back to the headmaster's face. Behind the man, he saw the bird cock its head to the side.

And then they got to sing. Without following a melody. At least they got the lyrics. Harry decided to use one from his dreams, the one from a song titled _Bink's Sake_ that he really liked.

* * *

"_If I didn't chase after you, then I'd be alone, and being alone hurts worse than pain!"_

* * *

School started off great and annoying. It was great because he was learning how to do magic, and it was annoying because the stupid stares, whispers and fascinated eyes followed him everywhere. Harry had once directed a rude gesture he had seen mostly in his dreams to a clutter of gossiping students that were pointing at him, a prefect saw him and docked five points. Harry directed then the gesture at the idiot's back.

Regarding to classes, he had very mixed opinions. He liked Transfiguration, it sounded like a very useful subject —and had a lot of fun potential— and professor McGonagall, though stern, was cool. She could turn into a cat. For a moment Harry had thought of asking if she was a Devil Fruit user, because ever since the hat pretty much confirmed they really existed he had been obsessed with the topic, but he soon learned she was an Animagus. That wasn't as cool as a Devil Fruit but was still cool.

Astronomy, when he managed to stay awake, was a nice class. Not because he had to learn the names of the stars and how the planets moved, Harry doubted he would do that too well, but because looking at the night sky brought a peaceful feeling to his chest he rather liked. Much to his classmates' amusement, only during the first class he had managed to lose himself to the feeling twice, and had been admonished by the professor for not paying attention.

Then there was Herbology.

That was a puzzling subject. For some reason neither he nor professor Sprout had been able to discover, the plants didn't like him. If they could, they moved away from him, and there had been this one flower in the first class, when the professor had showed them the greenhouses, that had tried to spray him with poison. He had decided to be extra careful, and the professor had lent him special glasses to protect his eyes until he could get his own pair.

According to the whole student population, History of Magic was the most boring class. Harry quite liked it, not because he was interested on the subject or actually able to stay awake as professor Binns droned out the facts, but precisely because he could sleep with the sure knowledge that Binns wouldn't notice. He had decide to carry a pillow there instead of his history book until he learned how to transfigure something small that wouldn't take up space in his book bag into a pillow.

Charms was also an interesting, potentially useful subject, and Harry liked the tiny, energetic professor Flitwick, even if the man had reacted to saying his name —it had helped to disperse his annoyance that the professor fell right after saying it— and he also liked that it was a mostly practical class.

Harry had been looking forward to Defense Against the Dark Arts, as both the title and the book were very promising, but one lesson with the stammering mess that was professor Quirrell had convinced him that the class wouldn't be nearly as interesting as he had expected it would. And the strong smell of garlic in the classroom made him hungry. Ron had joked that the noises Harry's stomach had begun to make halfway through the class had the professor's stammer worsen even more.

When Friday came, they had their first Potions class. It required a great deal of self control, something Harry only possessed as a consequence of having lived with the Dursleys, not to punch the professor. And at first Snape had sounded interesting with that speech of his, despite his comment about Harry when he took the roll call. Apparently, however, the man couldn't stand Harry for some reason, as he had picked on him from the beginning —so what if he hadn't studied before classes started? No one except Hermione Granger had— and things had just become worse as the class advanced, the professor having them pair up to make a potion to cure boils. He stalked around the class, intimidating most of the students and making them nervous.

Then Harry and Ron's potion exploded.

That had been it. Ron had received some minor burns, and Snape ordered Hermione —who tried to come out in their defence when the man descended on them like a hawk with its prey— to take Ron to the Hospital Wing, while he had a field day at Harry's expense and assigned him detention with Filch, the caretaker. Harry was somewhat glad Snape wouldn't take care of it himself.

Right when the man snapped at the class for staring at them instead of working, Neville's potion began to release a smoke that wasn't supposed to be there and he, too, had to be taken to the Hospital Wing.

* * *

Harry came back from Hagrid's hut in a much better mood that he had gone. Stefan had brought him the man's invitation that morning at breakfast, and at first Ron was supposed to come but the medi-witch, Madame Pomfrey, had refused to let him out of the Hospital Wing so soon. Harry had been in a very bad mood after Potions, but the time with Hagrid —and the cakes that were a little hard but pretty good— had been good for him.

They had talked about Hogwarts, Harry's classes —and he was _sure_ Hagrid knew why Snape acted like that with him— and Harry had seen a newspaper article about a break-in at Gringotts. The day they had gone there. He probably wouldn't have thought much of it if Hagrid hadn't refused to speak about the topic. Now Harry suspected it had been the vault Hagrid had picked up something from.

Harry took his time to walk back to the castle, nibbling on one of Hagrid's cakes as he walked around half an hour before dinner started, and he looked around at the extensive land that was Hogwarts' grounds, and decided he quite liked it. Since school started, Harry had been distracted with classes and all the magic around him, but being out here alone, the sun setting on the sky and the wind blowing gently, he thought he should come out more often, just to walk and think and be outside. He could visit the lake they had crossed to come the first night, for example. He liked the water.

Hearing a soft flapping noise, Harry turned his head and was surprised to see the red bird from the welcome feast flying in his direction. He stopped walking, and soon enough the bird was suspended, wings beating, before him. It poked Harry's forehead with its beak.

"Ow!" The boy complained, taking a hand where the beak had touched him not so gently. He looked at the bird, still on the air before him with its head cocked. Harry thought its eyes looked lazy, not the sharp gaze from the bird picture he had seen in his book. "You're a phoenix?" He asked, curious, and, much to his surprise, the bird moved its head up and down. Nodding.

It was strange, Harry thought. From the few things he had learned about birds at his Muggle school, he knew they were supposed to move their heads in jerky, fast movements —or so he had been told—, but this one had moved its head slowly. He shrugged and resumed his slow walking, the phoenix flying at a slow pace next to him.

"Were you watching me at the welcome feast?" Another nod. "Do you live around here?" A third nod. Harry wondered if the bird could really understand him or if it was only doing that every time he talked. He decided to try it. "Are you tasty? Can I have a taste?" Before he realized, the bird had ascended slightly and a wing swat him on the head. Hard. "Ow."

So it did understand him.

Taking advantage of having an audience that couldn't rat him out —or at least he was pretty sure it couldn't—, Harry began to talk about his week, not bothering to check the complaint, most of them colourful comments about the last professor he had met, as he had done during his visits with Hagrid.

Throughout his monologue of his first few days of class, the bird nodded, shook its head and even patted his back —_really_, with one of his wings— when Harry morosely spoke about his detention and how he really hadn't done anything wrong while making the potion.

When they reached the front doors, Harry turned to the bird, unsure of what to do, and was surprised when it ruffled his hair with a wing.

"I'll see you another day, I guess." He said, unsure, and the bird nodded before flying higher and disappearing from sight.

Harry followed it with his eyes, fascinated at how different the phoenix was from any animal he had even encountered, even that nice serpent at the zoo back on Dudley's birthday.

* * *

"_Why do you guys call him 'Pops'?"_

* * *

The next day, the beautiful afternoon of the first Saturday of the school year, while everybody enjoyed themselves outside, Harry found himself stuck in one of the bathrooms of the fifth floor, a bucket of water next to one wall and a toothbrush in hand courtesy of Argus Filch, the ugly, sour and very much annoying caretaker of the school. The man had left him here, saying he would come check on him from time to time and Harry wouldn't be allowed to leave until he was done, threatened with hanging him from his toes with chains in the dungeons if he even _suspected_ the use of magic and left.

Muttering under his breath —he had thought the humiliating chores would be over now that he wasn't at the Dursleys' anymore— he scrubbed viciously the inside of one of the toilets.

He heard the soft flapping of winds and turned, not as surprised as he probably should have been, to find the phoenix entering through the window and landing on one of the sinks lining the wall opposite the toilet stalls.

"Hey." He greeted, half tempted to tell the bird to move from there or it would get dirty, but shrugging as he remembered he would have to clean it either way when he started working on the sinks.

The phoenix turned its head to the side and let out a low trill Harry interpreted as a greeting.

"Sorry about the mess, I'm stuck in detention. I told you yesterday, didn't I? I think Snape told Filch to be extra nasty, because this is something I'd expect from the Dursleys."

The phoenix cocked its head to the side, and Harry thought it was asking him to elaborate. Maybe it wasn't, and it was simply Harry making things up because he was bored out of his mind, but either way he explained, and the bird did nothing to stop him.

"The Dursleys are the people I live with. They're a foul lot and hate me. They're my relatives and all, but I don't consider them family, because they don't act at all like a family should, always insulting me and giving me shores. That's not a family. A family is, well, Pops and the others, I guess."

He was startled when the phoenix snapped its wings open and became very still. Harry thought its eyes had opened completely, opposite to their strange half-lidded state from both earlier and moments ago.

"You want to know who are Pops and the others?" Slowly, the bird nodded. Harry smiled. "Since I was a little kid, since I can remember, really, I've had these strange dreams. They're about a boy that's really cool, and his life. He grew up in a forest, raised by some bandits that weren't really bad people despite their profession, and he met this other kid when he was five, and later another and the three of them became brothers and wanted to be pirates, but the first of his two brothers died one day and the other two were left alone. When he turned seventeen, the kid, or boy now I guess, set sail, found a good crew and became infamous. He decided to go kill the strongest man in the world, but lost and, after trying to kill him for a long time, decided to join the crew. That's Pops. He made a lot of friends there and found a new family, because in that crew they were family."

The bird, that had been staring at him all the time, jumped from its post and it glided down to land next to him on the floor and chirped at him. Harry placed a hand on its head and caressed softly. It was big enough that it reached up to Harry's chest in his kneeling position.

"There's some stuff I don't remember when I wake up, you know? Like the boy's name, it doesn't matter how hard I try. And the oldest I've ever seen him was twenty. Do you think something happened to him?"

Another chirp and the bird settled against Harry's leg, curled into itself and placed its small head on his leg. Harry attempted to move it to go back to complete his detention, but the bird didn't bulge —it must be strong, because Harry used all his strength as he asked it to move and didn't manage to push it even an inch and didn't seem to weigh that much—, so he shrugged and bent as best as he could to continue the tedious task of cleaning the bathroom. He wouldn't be surprised if it took him all afternoon with that ridiculous toothbrush.

* * *

Harry was ecstatic at the thought of finally receiving flying lessons. He listened to his classmates' stories about flying, hoping to learn a little of what he had to do, but most of those stories were outlandish 'adventures' that involved some flying Muggle artefact, and finally Harry decided he would have to wait for the lesson. He was nervous, though not as much as he was eager, and he wasn't the only one. Neville Longbottom was scared, as his grandmother had never allowed him to ride a broom before, and Hermione Granger was positively terrified.

That morning, excitement and nerves were mixed for the first years, mostly depending on who you looked at. Their class was, to general disappointment, shared with the Slytherins, and Harry wasn't happy that he would have to practice his self-control once more. Draco Malfoy had been a thorn in his side since school began and, though Harry could easily ignore most of his comments, the annoying brat sometimes managed to rile him up. He had to remember Dudley, and how he had always resisted from punching him, to stay calm. Otherwise, he would have been delighted to take a page off the freckled boy's book when he was ten and attack him with a pipe.

The class, of course, couldn't go without trouble. Harry did well, managing everything professor Hooch told them easily, but as soon as they were on their brooms Neville's nerves got the better of him, he shoot out accidentally and, after what probably was the greatest fright of his life, he fell and broke his wrist. The professor took him to the Hospital Wing, for some reason —not that Harry minded— leaving them with the brooms.

Malfoy took no time in showing how much of a spoiled idiot he was, and Harry would have ignored him if it wasn't because the boy took the object —he hadn't paid attention to what it was, busy as he had been eating breakfast— that Neville's grandmother had sent him. Harry liked Neville, he was a nice guy, and so he intervened to try to get it back.

They ended up in the sky and Malfoy, coward as he was, threw the object away. Harry shared many traits with the freckled boy from his dreams, and one of them was that he did not like to back off —though his upbringing had taught him to do it from time to time—, so he soared right after it. Flying, he decided, was a really nice feeling.

Harry saved the little ball from being destroyed by a hair's breath, but then McGonagall appeared, startling them all.

Oh, Harry was going to enjoy it when Malfoy not only saw he hadn't been expelled, but he had managed to do what the blond boy had been loudly complaining he couldn't do: Harry was allowed to join the Quidditch team.

* * *

"Ow! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Harry exclaimed, trying to cover his face with his arms to block the blows from the phoenix's deceptively strong wings.

He had just left the Quidditch pitch, where Oliver Wood had given him a quick course in Quidditch rules after McGonagall introduced them and told the older boy why Harry should join the team, and the phoenix had descended on him, attacking Harry viciously with the wings.

It didn't matter that the phoenix couldn't speak, the message was as clear as day: it had seen Harry's stunt at the flying class and hadn't liked it.

"Oh, come on, nothing happened!" He exclaimed, earning another swat at the head, but at least after that the bird stopped its assault. "Are you stalking me or what?"

He received a very convincing glare. Harry sighed and raised a hand to pat the bird's head.

"Sorry. I promise next time I do something stupid I'll have had some training first."

The bird's glare at those words made it clear it didn't approve, but, as if it knew Harry wouldn't be swayed away from entering the Quidditch team, it rose a little higher and flew next to him all the way to the house.

Harry spent the whole walk talking excitedly about everything Wood had explained him about Quidditch.

* * *

Backing off from a fight, unfortunately, wasn't a common occurrence in Harry's life. He had been stupid enough to accept Malfoy's challenge for a duel, when he knew the other boy was too cowardly to actually show up, ignoring Hermione Granger's warnings not to go. Hell, he had been rude to the girl even, annoyed by her overbearing bossy attitude. But she had been right.

She had been forced to accompany them when she tried to stop them and found herself stranded outside the common room, along with Neville Longbottom —who apparently hadn't been able to enter the common room because he had forgotten the password— and of course Harry's feeling about Malfoy had been true and the other boy had set Filch on them.

What Harry hadn't expected was to stumble upon a three headed dog as they fled from the man —and did Harry hate fleeing, but he had been an idiot once today already—. A dog that, according to Hermione, guarded a trapdoor.

_Interesting. This needs some investigation._

And Harry was sure the investigation would reveal that whatever Hagrid took out of the Gringotts' vault that day would be under that trapdoor.

* * *

"Ow, ow, ow!" Harry covered himself with his book bag as the phoenix once again hit him with its wings after he told it about what had happened the previous night. "Enough!"

Harry jumped back and the bird, luckily, didn't follow. It glared at him, though.

"I'll stop telling you stuff if you're going to react like that every time!"

The bird's eyes turned sad all of a sudden, and it trilled morosely. Harry glared at it but, at the second trill, he relented and sighed. _Manipulative—_

"Fine, fine, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

**To be continued**


	3. Chapter 3

This is sooner than I intended to update, but I had the chapter almost done and someone asked me to update, so I finished it and here it is.

I have to say I'm not sure what to think about this story's reception so far. Over fifty followers for the two first chapters is far more than I had expected but, at the same time, I'm somewhat confused and disappointed by the amount of reviews. Don't get me wrong, I love the ones I've got, and I'm really grateful for them, but I'm not going to lie and say receiving reviews isn't important to me. It is, and it's a little depressing not receiving them when, both by looking at the followers and the number of views this story has, I know there's people who at least read it.

Having got that out of my chest, here is chapter 3.

* * *

**Chapter 3: Friends here and there**

After being scolded by the bird, as stupid as that sounded, Harry had decided it would be prudent not to mention the brand new broomstick he had received that morning, lest the bossy phoenix decided he deserved another assault to be reminded he shouldn't pull any stupid stunts with it. Harry doubted he wouldn't do it —he _was_ going to play Quidditch, and as a Seeker no less— but it felt strangely nice to have someone worrying about his wellbeing for a change. Or something. Whatever, the feeling was there all the same.

Instead, Harry decided to find a good sitting place under a tree and tell the bird some more about his dreams. He had never spoken about them to anybody —not even to Ron, despite how good friends they were becoming— and it was nice to talk about them, even if the phoenix couldn't answer him. It seemed to like the stories, anyway, as it hopped on Harry's lap —despite the boy's half-hearted complaints— and made the occasional sound to let him know it was paying attention.

* * *

Halloween came and Harry wasn't sure how he felt. There was a festive atmosphere in the castle, and most of the students were cheerful and eager for the night —and the feast they would have then— to arrive, and Harry wanted to join the mood, which he did most of the time. But now and then he remembered that ten years ago today Lord Voldemort had murdered his parents, and he felt guilty for being in such high spirits, his mood souring until he was reminded of what awaited ahead.

Then, there was the incident after Charms' class. Harry hadn't, up until now, given much thought to Ron's dislike of Hermione Granger —after all he didn't exactly like the girl, either— but today his friend had been excessively cruel, even if he hadn't said anything to her face. Still, Hermione had heard his comment, and left in tears, not to be seen for the remainder of the classes nor the feast. Had Ron said it directly to Hermione —that it was no wonder no one could stand her— then Harry would have got mad at him, but as things were he simply made it clear he hadn't liked that comment much. Hermione might be annoying, but she had good intentions and hadn't done anything that hurt them.

When Harry saw Hermione wasn't at the feast that night, he thought about talking to her in the morning, but couldn't come up with anything to say. What could he tell the girl? 'I'm sorry about what Ron said, but it is true no one can stand you because you're too bossy'? Yeah, sure, that would help her a lot.

Soon, Harry's attention was completely pulled away from the girl by all the delicious food available. That was until professor Quirrell barged into the Great Hall yelling there was a troll in the dungeons.

Then he fainted.

_What a good DADA professor._

Chaos broke and, when it was finally controlled by Dumbledore, they were ordered to go to their dormitories. Harry had all the intention to follow Percy —the prefect accompanying the first years— there, he really did, but then he remembered not everybody had attended the feast.

"Ron," he pulled at his friend's robe to catch his attention over all the noise, "Hermione didn't come to the feast."

"Oh, alright. But Percy better not see us."

Thinking fast, Harry realized if Hermione had been crying she would have run to the closest girls' bathroom to the Charms classroom.

Slipping away from the crowd was ridiculously easy —weren't they supposed to be making sure no one did that?— but they had to hide when Percy, or so Ron thought, approached. It happened to be Snape, who wasn't heading to the dungeons like the rest of the professors.

Ignoring that in light of a much more pressing matter, they continued on their way as soon as the path was clear.

The plan was simple: find Hermione and take her to the common room where everyone else was headed. It would have been easy if it wasn't because the troll, that was supposed to be in the dungeons, was there. They saw it advancing through the hallway and then enter a room, so they decided to lock it there. The key was in the keyhole, after all.

The plan worked brilliantly, or it would have if it wasn't because the room in question happened to be the girls' bathroom and Hermione was inside.

That was how the boys found themselves charging into a room with a troll inside to try to get a girl away from it. And, as stupid as people say trolls are, it was no easy task.

The troll, in its way to reach a cowering Hermione, was demolishing anything in its way, even the solid sinks, and Harry had an idea. They had to distract it, of course, or they couldn't reach Hermione, and the best way to do it would be to draw it was far away from the girl as possible.

"Get ready to get to Hermione," he told Ron and, when his friend nodded, Harry rushed forward, took a broken tap and threw it with all his strength at the troll, yelling: "Look behind you, you idiot!"

In the split second it took the troll to process what had happened and turn around, Harry had collected various other broken parts of the bathroom in his arms and, as soon as the troll had his attention on him, threw a broken pipe right between its beady eyes.

Now, from any average eleven year old, that impact wouldn't have been hard enough for that thing to even notice it if it hadn't seen it, but Harry was strong enough that the hit, though it clearly didn't hurt, seemed to have angered the troll enough to forget his previous prey and charge after Harry.

The boy backed away through the door, the troll following with a roar, and Harry threw another broken pipe at its head, this time hitting the troll on its open mouth. He had to scurry back, yelping, when the troll raised the club it carried and hit, hard, the place where Harry had just been.

He saw the other two exiting the bathroom, Ron helping a shocked and terrified Hermione to move.

"Think of something!" Harry yelled, one arm full of his improvised weapons while with the other hand he threw another random object at the troll to keep its attention.

Things didn't look good, he was no monstrously strong freckled boy who could take on a lion with a pipe, and he would soon run out of ammunition to throw at it.

His next projectile embedded itself into one of the troll's eyes, and Harry smirked triumphantly when this time it howled in pain, raising both hands to try to pull the painful object from its eye.

The club fell uselessly to the floor.

Harry heard the others say something, but his attention was solely centred on the troll, adrenaline pumping through his body, and he couldn't make out the words. His next item, a piece of broken porcelain from a sink, hit one of the troll's wrists.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

Harry was startled by Ron's yell, and he watched, stopping for a moment his assault, as the troll's club rose high into the air, high enough to hover way over the troll's head, and then it fell, impacting with a loud crack onto its owner's head.

The troll fell to the floor, and ever louder bang this time, and didn't move.

Harry threw another pipe at it to be sure it really wasn't moving before cautiously stepping around the fallen body. He hurried to where Ron and Hermione stood, both looking with stunned fascination at the fallen troll.

"Is it — dead?" Hermione asked hesitantly.

Harry looked at the troll. He doubted a being like that could be killed so easily, and he said so.

Then, a small contingent of professors came running, and they stopped at the sight before them.

The result of that encounter wasn't what Harry had expected upon seeing the adults. Alright, so Quirrell acting as if he was about to faint at the sight of the troll and sitting down wasn't all that surprising considering previous events —and that useless moron was supposed to teach them how to defend themselves?— nor was the angry reaction of both professors McGonagall and Snape, but what happened afterwards was. Hermione lied. Hermione Granger lied to her teachers, placing the blame on herself when she was the only one who wasn't at fault in the whole incident, and she didn't change her story even when she was scolded by McGonagall or deducted points.

And McGonagall even congratulated Harry and Ron.

Snape didn't seem to buy the story, though, but that didn't matter, because with McGonagall there it wasn't his job to punish them.

After the troll incident, Ron and Harry had silently agreed that they liked Hermione, and when they arrived at the common room the girl must have decided she liked them, too, because she thanked them and brought food for the three of them. They sat together to eat and talk.

Ron apologized for being mean to her, Hermione apologized for being so bossy and trying to correct him all the time —though she made it clear she probably wouldn't stop, just try to be nicer about it— and Harry apologized, much to the other two's confusion, for not having done anything. He explained he hadn't liked much neither of their attitudes but hadn't done anything, and the other two rolled their eyes at him and told him to shut up.

* * *

"IT WASN'T MY FAULT!" was the first think Harry said —not squealed, mind you— when he saw the phoenix the next afternoon, at what had now become their usual meeting place even now when it was much colder.

He wouldn't put it past the bird to somehow know what had transpired the previous night, and it sure did, because it fixed him with a hard, reproachful glare, but it didn't swat him right away, which Harry took for its agreement to hear him out first.

Harry explained his story, and was finally let out with only a shake of the phoenix's head and having his hair ruffled. He was pretty sure that soft movement of the bird's wing over his head had been that, even if the concept of a bird ruffling a boy's hair might sound stupid.

"I was kind of worried, you know? It was dumb luck that we got out of there uninjured, but I really couldn't have defeated that thing on my own," he sighed. "I'm sure the freckled boy could have done it."

The phoenix cocked its head and brushed his arm with a wing. Harry smiled.

"Hey, what's your name?"

The bird trilled.

"Oh, yeah, you can't tell me." Could it write it? Harry mentally shook himself. Now that had been a stupid thought. Birds didn't write. "Then how I should call you? I don't like to keep thinking of you as 'it', 'the bird' or 'the phoenix'."

The phoenix spread its wings in a strange upwards movement that Harry had come to think of as its equivalent of a shrug.

"What about Marco?" The bird's wings snapped closed and it stared at him. "Oh, I haven't told you about him, have I? He's one of the boy's friends, first division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates and Pops' first mate. He's a cool guy, and can turn himself into a phoenix. Though he's blue and really big, "Harry added thoughtfully. "What do you say?"

The phoenix, whose eyes Harry could almost swear had widened, nodded swiftly. Harry grinned.

"Marco it is, then."

* * *

Harry grinned. Marco stared at the jar he was holding, the bright blue fire it contained casting shadows in the darkening classroom.

Soon after the troll incident, the weather had turned too cold to sit outside against a tree for long, and Harry had endeavoured to find them another place to meet. His search, aided by some questions here and there, had resulted in various unused classrooms throughout the castle that would work nicely, and Harry had decided on the one he had found in the seventh floor, closest to Gryffindor Tower. He simply had to open the window for Marco to enter it, and the bird —of whom Harry had come to think as a 'he' due to the name— always showed up at the time they had agreed.

Today was the last day before the first Quidditch match of the season, and Harry had needed to escape the madness for a while —if he heard another comment about how he would fail spectacularly, he would kill someone. Earlier that day, Hermione had used that spell so they would have a fire to keep them warm in the courtyard, and the flames had immediately reminded Harry of the Marco in his dreams. The girl had agreed to cast it again when Harry had asked her, and now here he was.

"See? The other Marco's flames are like this," he told the phoenix, placing the jar on an empty desk.

Marco looked up at him from his perch on one of the chairs, back at the fire and once more at Harry. He nodded.

Satisfied with himself, Harry sank gratefully in one of the chairs.

"Sorry I haven't been around lately, things have been crazy," he apologized, aware that it had been over a week since he last saw the phoenix. "Hermione's now helping me with homework, and that's great, but Wood has gone all mad with all the last minute practice," he yawned, remembering how much he had wanted to punch the team's captain that morning when the boy had woke him up three hours before breakfast to train.

Marco rose from the chair, landed on the desk in front of Harry and, much to the boy's confusion, dropped sideways into it, looking at him. Then he used his free wing to cover his body and Harry understood.

"Sleep? No, I haven't slept much lately."

Again, Marco jumped, this time to stand on Harry's legs —and Harry was still surprised that the bird's talons never hurt him— and pointed with a wing to one of Harry's wrist. To his watch. Harry looked at it.

"What about the time?" He showed the watch to the bird, who again pointed at it, then at Harry, and then closed its eyes for a moment.

It took a moment for the boy to understand what the phoenix meant but, when he did, he chuckled.

"I'll try to go to bed early, don't worry."

Nodding, the bird flew back to its perch on the chair.

"Oh, have I told you Snape was limping earlier today? He had his leg all bloodied, I bet he tried to get past the three-headed dog."

* * *

Harry Potter was sure the only reason the broom didn't manage to throw him off was his vast experience climbing trees and other generally complicated places.

As he desperately clutched the flailing broom with both hands, he could honestly say he had no idea of what had happened. Things were going well, he had been keeping an eye out for the snitch while looking to the other players —and having a laugh at Lee Jordan's unorthodox and completely biased commentary of the game. He could hear the scared screams coming from the stands, that didn't exactly diminish when the broom jerked and threw one of his hands off, leaving him dangle even more perilously at a decidedly deadly height.

He was trying to grasp the broom with his now free hand again when it suddenly stopped acting as a raging bull. Before he could even stop to process what had happened, he took impulse to pull his hanging body up and climb back on the broomstick, clasping his hands tightly around it even though it didn't act up again.

He crowd calmed fast when it was obvious whatever had happened was over and the game resumed. In the middle of all the excitement, no one noticed the bird that turned around to land back on the top of the Gryffindor stands.

* * *

Later that evening, after his visit to Hagrid with his friends and the man's accidental revelation of someone named Nicholas Flamel as being related to whatever the three headed dog —that Hagrid had referred to as _Fluffy_— was guarding, Harry was expecting at least a talon to the head when he opened the window to let Marco into the classroom at the seventh floor, and was thus surprised when, instead of that, the bird dropped a bag on one of the tables and went to his usual perch at the back of a chair.

Curious, Harry closed the window and went to sit at the chair in front of the table.

"What's this?"

The bird gestured to the bag and Harry, guessing he wanted him to open it, did as he was signalled. Inside were five Chocolate Frogs.

Harry looked up at Marco, grinning.

"Is this for me?" The bird nodded.

Marco cried in what could have been either indignation or surprise when Harry caught him in a bear hug.

* * *

_The boy couldn't help grinning despite the bandages that the nurses had wrapped around his torso. That fight had been fun, but of course it would have been much better without that stupid haki user swordsman trying to cut him in two._

_He stopped in his tracks when he exited the infirmary and saw Marco leaning into the wall, arms crossed and a box on the floor next to him._

_He swallowed, half fearing he would end right back in the infirmary, this time to spend some nights in there._

"_Hey," he greeted, trying to sound casual._

_Marco pushed away from the wall, bent down to pick the box up —and the boy noticed it was a basket- and handed it to him._

"_You missed dinner."_

* * *

"Where do you go all the time?" Ron asked one evening while they —they being Ron and Harry— did their Transfiguration homework. It was due tomorrow, and Hermione had only agreed to help them with it if they at least tried to write the essay themselves first.

That question got the girl's attention as well, who raised her head from her Potions textbook to look at Harry expectantly.

"To wander around," answered the dark haired boy, shrugging. He knew there was no reason to hide his meeting with Marco from his friends, it wasn't as if they were doing something bad, but he wanted to keep them to himself. Why that was, Harry wasn't sure, but that didn't change anything.

"Every day?" Hermione asked, a slightly suspicious tone in her voice. Harry nodded.

"Are you exploring the castle? Can we come?" Ron asked excitedly, dropping his quill and smearing ink on his parchment in the process, much to Hermione's disapproval.

Now Harry felt a little awkward. How were you supposed to refuse your friends something when they wanted it and you didn't? It wasn't as if he had had friends before, and finally he settled for the tamest way the freckled boy from his dream used —he wasn't about to punch anybody—, being truthful.

"No, I'd rather you didn't."

He could see the mix of confusion and hurt on his friends' faces, and hurried to elaborate.

"I just like to spend some time alone, really, that's all." So maybe that wasn't the truth, but Ron and Hermione accepted it and went back to studying.

* * *

Harry had landed himself in detention again not long before Christmas when, after an impressive show of self-control during the first few months of school, he had decided it wasn't worth hearing the shit Malfoy spouted just to avoid a silly detention. It had happened in the hallways right after professor McGonagall had asked those who would stay for the holidays to sign in a list. Harry, of course, had done so, and the Slytherin had wasted no time in mocking him for not having a family that loved him and wanted him home as soon as they were outside the classroom. Now Malfoy would have to get his nose mended thanks to his efforts.

Unsurprisingly, Marco had shown up at the trophy room right after Filch had left once the caretaker had told Harry he would have to clean a whole shelf of trophies for his detention. Somehow, the bird seemed to know everything that went on in the castle.

What had been surprising, given Marco's penchant for vigorously scolding him every time Harry did something stupid, he had expected to be slapped on the head by a wing as soon as the bird reached him.

What Harry hadn't expected had been for Marco to pat his leg with a wing and curl up next to him, not giving the slightest sign that he was mad or disappointed at him.

Harry tried very hard to convince himself this didn't mean he could hit other students without earning Marco's anger for it.

* * *

When Christmas finally came, there had been no advances in the mystery of whatever was past the trapdoor Fluffy protected. Harry and Ron said goodbye to Hermione, the only one of the three who would be going home as Ron's parents had gone to visit his brother Charlie to Romania.

Harry's Christmas was spent mostly with Ron, as they were the only ones left in their dormitory, joined sometimes by the twins —who spent most of the time doing who knows what but joined in for some snowball fights that didn't end well for the other students staying at the castle— and he spent several hours each day with Marco.

Once again, he had told the phoenix about something he had never believed he would tell anyone.

"You know, this Christmas is going to be great. I've never celebrated it, not really, the Dursleys never included me in the festivities, and would usually give me some ridiculous present that didn't cost them anything and would make it clear they don't care about me. Like the dirty rags one year."

Marco nudged him on the cheek with his beak, and Harry could have sworn there was an angry glint in the bird's eyes. He smiled. They were friends, and he liked to know his friend cared about him. He stroked the phoenix's back.

"But this year I'm here, surrounded by magic and with friends, and it's going to be the best Christmas ever, you'll see."

* * *

And he had been right. Although, Harry must admit, he hadn't expected to receive presents. That had come out as a surprise.

Hagrid had sent him a flute, which was nice even if Harry had never learned how to play an instrument. Harry tried it all the same, the flute seemed to have been carved by hand, and it didn't sound bad.

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon sent him a fifty-pence piece. That was the nicest present Harry had ever received from his relatives, and he guessed it was because they were pleased of not having him there.

Mrs. Weasley, much to Harry's surprise, had sent him a hand-knitted sweater —in a nice shade of green— and sweets. Homemade sweets. Ron was embarrassed by it, but Harry felt a warm feeling taking place in his chest at the thought that Mrs. Weasley had take the time to work on a present for _him_.

Once he saw the presents, Harry had expected Hermione to send him a book, and was both amused and happy to discover a big box of Chocolate Frogs instead. The girl had noticed his appetite, in fact she complained more about his appalling table manners than she did Ron's.

After Hermione's present, there had one more package left, or so he thought, because when he took the parcel in his hands —a very light one despite its size— he uncovered another, smaller parcel still on the floor. He tore open the one in his hands first and Ron's jaw almost fell to the floor.

It was an invisibility cloak, and Harry did indeed disappear when he put it on. According to the note that came with it —but didn't say who had sent it to him— the cloak had belonged to his father, and Harry felt even happier about his present when he learned this fact.

Ron was playing with the cloak —Harry had lent it to him after having him beg a little even though he had already decided to let him use it— when Harry crouched down to open the remaining present. Only Hagrid's and the Dursleys' had been smaller, and Harry briefly wondered why whoever had left the presents there had let it at the bottom of the pile, but put the thought aside as he carefully ripped the paper open.

His friend's bodiless excited comments disappeared from his awareness as he stared fixedly at the thick red beads of the necklace that had been inside, a small piece of parchment folded amongst them. Harry took it in his free hand and unfolded it, the necklace still held on the other. The text was short, and it was the second card today that didn't have a sender.

_I thought you would like this._

Harry wondered how someone could have sent this to him. He hadn't told anybody about his dreams, only Marco.

He snorted.

_Sure, Harry, you described the guy you've always dreamed about to a bird, who then somehow managed to find a necklace like the one you barely gave any details about, write a note —with a quill, no less, not even an easy pen— wrap it all nicely, much better than Hagrid, and drop it here._

He chuckled at his own thoughts, but nonetheless slipped the item on, caressing the beads as they settled around his neck.

"What's that, mate?" Ron asked, his head out of the cloak to look better at his friend's last present. Harry had to admit it was mildly disturbing.

"My new necklace." He answered as he stood up. Taking all his Christmas cards in one hand, he went to put them into his trunk before they went down for breakfast.

No sooner had he done that, the Weasley twins burst through the door, and it was sheer luck that Ron reacted fast enough to hide the cloak under Harry's bed.

**To be continued**


	4. Chapter 4

I didn't expect to update until after the 28th, because it's the MarcoAce week on tumblr and I'm writing stuff for it, but this chapter came out. It's a little shorter than the others, because the next part is long and I prefer to post a shorter chapter now than a longer one who knows when.

Any dialogue you recognize, and this applies to any other chapter, belongs to Rowling. Remember, no money here in any form or sense.

* * *

**Chapter 4: Playing detective**

From the first day, Harry had known Marco had to live somewhere in the castle, there was no other reason why he would have been at the welcome feast the first day, but Harry hadn't thought at all about it, and that was why, when he came into the Great Hall for the Christmas dinner with the Weasleys, he was surprised to see him perched on Dumbledore's table just like that first day.

Marco raised a wing in greeting, and Harry answered with a wave of his hand, but that was almost all the interaction they had during the feast. Almost, because when Harry opened one of the wizard crackers and got a rear admiral's hat out of it he burst into almost hysterical laughter, earning weird looks from everyone present except for Marco, who bobbed his head and flapped his wings in what Harry took as understanding of his reaction.

He ate as much as he wanted, his lack of table manners and what Hermione had dubbed his 'bottomless pit', commonly known as stomach, attracting much more attention in the small crowd present than they normally did in the meals when school was on. At least he wasn't receiving disgusted looks —not many, Snape, McGonagall and some Slytherin boy didn't count— because Harry had been smart enough not to emulate the freckled boy's habit of stuffing his face in an impressive imitation of a vacuum.

All in all, Harry had been right and this had been the best Christmas ever. He was so full and so tired that, when he climbed into bed, he was asleep even before his head touched the pillow.

* * *

The next night, however, Ron fell asleep before Harry did, and the boy, who had been restlessly turning around in bed, sat up and took his glasses from the nightstand, putting them on. His mind flashed back to his presents yesterday, more precisely to the invisibility cloak that had been his father's, and three words from the card accompanying it flashed through his mind.

Use it well.

Anyone would think that was advice to behave. It was also a clear challenge to break the rules. His mind made up, Harry stood up, put on his shoes, threw his school cloak over his pyjamas and the invisibility cloak over that one.

For a moment, he thought about waking up Ron, but finally decided against it. This was his first time going out on an adventure with his father's invisibility cloak, and he felt it was an important occasion between him and the father he didn't remember.

He would bring Ron some other time, tonight was for Harry alone.

* * *

Harry panted heavily, his back pressed against the wall, and he slid down the wall as soon as the footsteps disappeared in the hallway, the cloak still hiding him.

His plan had been simple enough: sneak into the Restricted Section and search for any reference to Nicholas Flamel. How was he supposed to know that a bloody _book_ would shriek as soon as Harry opened it, alerting Filch —who just happened to be nearby— of his presence?

Harry had replaced the book and bolted out of the library, his cloak the only reason why the man hadn't caught him. Then, once Harry thought he had gotten away, he had stopped to breathe, only to have Filch show up in the same hallway he was in, _accompanied by Snape_.

Now Harry was trying to get his breathing back under control and he grimaced. He was really out of shape if a sprint like that left him so exhausted. He had barely done any exercise aside from Quidditch —and that didn't exactly require running— since he arrived at Hogwarts, and would have to do something about it.

How was he supposed to escape detentions if he practically couldn't run? And his speed had left a lot to be desired, as well.

After an embarrassingly long time, Harry managed to breathe somewhat normally again and stood up, the cloak sliding down his shoulders as he did so. He couldn't hear steps or voices anymore, but he would wait before going back out into the hallways, lest one of the two men had decided to keep an eye around in hopes of catching him.

He looked around. He was in what looked to be an unused classroom that would be no different from his and Marco's classroom if it wasn't for the huge mirror standing against the wall on the other side of the room.

When his eyes landed on it, he took a startled step back at what the mirror reflected. Or what it _didn't_ reflect. He wasn't standing there in the dark, dishevelled hair and ruffled robes as he knew he had. He was there, yes, but he was sitting down on what looked to be wooden steps, and he was taller and more muscular. He looked older, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old.

He wasn't alone.

There was a woman sitting to his left. She was a pretty red-haired woman who had bright green eyes just like Harry's. Next to her was a man who looked a lot like Harry did —though he didn't seem as fit as the older Harry in the reflection was— with the exception of his eyes. The man was talking to another, taller man dressed almost completely in white and with his brown hair styled into a pompadour.

To Harry's other side sat a blond man wearing an open shirt that displayed the huge tattoo on his chest who, much to the redheaded woman's amused annoyance, was passing Harry food that he was eating happily.

Behind them sat an enormous man looking at them in fondness as he drank from a bottle almost as big as himself, and they were surrounded by many more people eating, drinking and having fun.

He vaguely noted there was no trace of the boy who always appeared in his dreams.

Then, much to his amusement, a blond kid wearing a top hat and a smaller dark haired boy with a straw hat that was too big for him came running into the scene, and the dark haired boy crashed into the man who looked so much like Harry, sending him toppling onto the woman and the older Harry.

And the real Harry couldn't care less to know why the mirror was showing him that image, because there he was, laughing happily and surrounded by all the family he had always wished for. And it felt even greater, more _magical_, because even though Harry had dreamed about the others plenty of times, this was the first time Harry had seen his parents.

* * *

For some brief seconds, Harry thought of telling Ron about the mirror, but he discarded the idea. He was sure Ron would be happy that Harry had got to see his parents, and would probably want to see them as well, but if Harry showed Ron the mirror he would have to tell him about the dreams. Harry might not know much about the Wizarding World, but he was pretty sure having dreams about someone else's life wasn't normal, and he didn't want to risk that Ron decided he was crazy or too weird and didn't want to be his friend anymore.

And so, Harry didn't say anything about the mirror to Ron.

Harry wanted to tell Marco, though, because the phoenix did know about his dreams, but that day Marco didn't come to the classroom. That was fine, sometimes Marco didn't make it, and sometimes the combination of homework plus Hermione —and sometimes Wood going crazy over Quidditch practices— prevented Harry from going to the classroom, too.

He wasn't stupid enough to believe his phoenix friend had no life aside from being with Harry.

That night he went back to the mirror, and he cried and laughed when, much to his mother's dismay, over a hundred men started a drinking competition —Luffy and Sabo had to be bodily restrained because, apparently, they had wanted to participate. Marco, the one from the Whitebeard Pirates, won, and even though he couldn't hear a single word Harry could easily imagine that what the others were saying and yelling were complaints of how he shouldn't have participated with his power. Harry himself, almost passed out on the floor and completely inebriated, received what looked like an impressive scolding from his mother.

He would give anything to be scolded like that by her.

* * *

Harry, who had irresponsibly run all the way to the mirror's classroom, ignoring all caution and stealth preferring to be there as soon as possible, barrelled through the door, barely remembering to close it somewhat carefully instead of kicking it, and slid to the floor in front of the mirror. The invisibility cloak fell to the ground around him.

The boy grinned, seeing as his older self was in a shop with his mother and Izo trying to get him to try on some clothes. He didn't look all that pleased and, behind the woman and the crossdresser, his father and Marco were sending him sympathetic looks.

"So — back again, Harry?"

He practically jumped out of his skin. He turned his head around, internally berating himself for having lowered his guard —he would never have done it before coming to Hogwarts, no matter where he had been or what he had been doing. There, sitting on one of the desks, was the headmaster.

"I-I didn't see you," he said, "Sir," Harry added almost as an afterthought. It was annoying how he seemed to forget using that word sometimes. He was surprised no teacher had given him detention for disrespect yet. Only because he hadn't slipped near Snape, he was sure.

"Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you," said Dumbledore, smiling.

Harry almost sighed in relief. The headmaster didn't look angry, maybe that meant he would get away with only a reprimand or something.

"So," said the man, moving to sit on the floor next Harry, "you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised." Harry grunted noncommittally. "But I expect you've realized by now what it does?"

He almost answered it showed his family, but interrupted himself. Yes, it did show his family, but it also showed the boy from his dreams' family. Families, really. Once again, he almost spoke to say it showed the future, because Harry himself had looked older. Which wasn't possible, because the pirates looked as the freckled boy had known them, but there were Sabo and Luffy as children, too. And his parents had been there. No amount of wistful thinking would bring them back. Not even magic, he was sure, or people would probably never die.

"It shows you what you wish to be true," Harry said finally, and he didn't like the pressure that settled in his chest. He hadn't thought of it, perhaps he hadn't wanted to or had been too distracted by what he had been seeing to think of it, but those images, what the mirror showed, were just illusions. That mirror was dangling before him a wonderful life that would never, could never, be his.

Suddenly, Harry didn't like the mirror nearly as much.

Dumbledore smiled. The gesture was almost like the benevolent one from before, but there was a touch of sadness in the man's expression this time. If it wasn't for everything he had experienced in his dreams, Harry thought, he wouldn't have noticed the difference.

"Yes, that is what it does. It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, if I may hazard a guess, have never known your family, and see them standing around you." Harry nodded. A soft ache had appeared in his stomach, and his enthusiasm from earlier had vanished completely. "However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

"The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again." Harry nodded again. He didn't want anything to do with the mirror now that he _knew_ what it was, he didn't want to be taunted with everything that would never be his. "If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don't you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?"

Harry stood up but stopped before putting the cloak back on. Maybe it was stupidity what made him speak, but he asked:

"Professor? What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks."

Harry stared.

"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."

Alright, so that had been too personal, he should have guessed he wouldn't receive a straight answer. At least the headmaster wasn't offended.

* * *

"I saw my parents."

Marco, perched on the edge of the desk where Harry was resting his arms, leaned his head to the side in a way the boy had learned to interpret as a question.

"I found this weird mirror —Dumbledore called it the Mirror of Erised— and it showed them to me. The Whitebeard Pirates were there, and Luffy and Sabo too," he grinned. "The other Marco was there, you know," Marco trilled. "I wanted to show them to you, but the mirror is not there now. It's annoying, but I think Dumbledore was right; I can't get hung up on an illusion like that."

Another trill, and a small warm body got past his arms and soon was pressed against his chest.

Harry blushed slightly and awkwardly patted Marco on the head.

"Seriously, what's with you hugging me all the time?" Harry muttered, but did nothing to push Marco away.

* * *

_Let's set out to sea one day, and live a life with more freedom than anyone else._

* * *

Being smacked on the head was not the reaction Harry had expected to his —completely justified— long winded complaints about the utter misfortune that had befallen him not too long after the start of term.

Rubbing his head —because the stupid flying chicken hit _hard_— Harry glared at an equally glaring Marco.

"What? You can't seriously be mad at me for _that_?"

Somehow, Marco scoffed —it was as much of a mystery as it had been at the beginning how the bird could manage such a wide range of emotions. Harry didn't remember anything about that from his primary school lessons. But, whatever the explanation, it was clear his friend disagreed with him.

"It's not just that Snape's a git, which he _is_; he tried to _kill me_ during the last match, the spell stopped after Hermione set his robes on fire, and now he's going to referee the next match!" he exclaimed. "Even if he doesn't try to kill me, he'll ruin our chances to win the Cup!"

In retrospect, Harry probably shouldn't have mentioned the Quidditch Cup. Marco had looked willing enough to listen while Harry had expressed his concern over a new murder attempt, but as soon as the Cup was mentioned he was thumped on the head again.

* * *

Harry should have felt like an idiot when he realized he had read the name Nicholas Flamel back in the train, on Dumbledore's Chocolate Frogs' card, because if he had just remembered —or bothered to look at the text on the Dumbledore cards he had found in other Chocolate Frogs since, he and his friends would have been saved long hours of fruitless search in the library.

As things were, Harry was too busy being fascinated, and thinking of the many possibilities, by what Hermione had just read to them.

The Philosopher's Stone, a stone that stopped someone from dying and created gold. Yes, Harry could see why Snape would be interested in getting his hands on it. Anyone would be, really. Harry himself wasn't all that interested in the no dying bit, but the gold... That would mean as much food as he wanted whenever he wanted it, being able to go wherever he wanted without having to worry about the stupid prices to travel everywhere.

Harry managed to tune back into the conversation before his mind went off on some daydream. Luckily, his friends hadn't noticed anything.

Knowing what was under that trapdoor, however, didn't affect in any way Harry's school life. He had told Marco that they had discovered what was under the trapdoor, and had been surprised when the bird hadn't scolded him —probably because he and his friends had no plans of trying to get to the stone; facing Fluffy wasn't an appealing prospect.

As the next Quidditch match approached, however, the stone took a back seat in Harry's mind. Thoughts of his probable death became more and more common, and not only for him; Ron and Hermione were proving to be horrible at hiding their worry when they tried to reassure him.

All his fears vanished when Fred Weasley saw Dumbledore in the stands. Of course, after one murder attempt, he should have expected the Headmaster to come. The man was no idiot —he _had_ known Harry had been going to look into the damn mirror— and it was no surprise he had guessed what Harry's 'accident' in the previous match had been. He hoped so, at least.

* * *

Harry was muttering the afternoon of the first Monday after the Quidditch match as he went to his and Marco's classroom. He would have liked to go earlier —the match had been on Saturday, after all— but all of Gryffindor House seemed to have gone mad over their fast victory, not that Harry couldn't understand, and every time he had tried to slip away, either from the tower or the table at the Great Hall, someone had stopped him and dragged him off to celebrate.

Harry hadn't been in much of a celebratory mood, not after what he had witnessed the same day of the match, as he went to put his broom away.

The Stone had come crashing back to the forefront of his mind.

Snape was after it, now there was no doubt about that. Just great.

He pushed the classroom door open with enough strength to make it bounce against the wall with a resounding bang and kicked it closed as soon as he was inside. Barely a minute later, Marco showed up outside the window —and Harry had no idea how the bird did it to always appear minutes after he had arrived into the classroom— and flew in when the boy opened it, carrying a bag of what turned out to be assorted sweets with him.

"That's for me?" Harry asked and, as an answer, Marco dropped the bag before him, flying to perch on a nearby chair.

Harry took a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and opened it, popping one —blueberries, thankfully, into his mouth.

Marco trilled and bent his head to one side in that questioning gesture of his. It took the wizard a moment to realize the bird must be asking about Harry's sour mood.

He scoffed.

"I should be jumping around in happiness or something, right? I won the Quidditch match." Marco gave no visible answer, and Harry continued. "But things just went to hell right after. Remember the Stone?"

Marco narrowed his already lazy-looking eyes and flapped his wings. Up and down. That was another way he had to say yes.

"Well, I just discovered something else. Snape's after it, we knew that, but now it's for sure. I saw him threatening Quirrell, I think he's trying to get that idiot," because, victim or not, Quirrell _was_ an idiot, "to discover how to get past Fluffy. Probably doesn't want to get anywhere near the dog again," Harry commented with a malicious smirk. He would've given anything to see how Fluffy bit Snape.

It was probably his imagination, but Harry would have sworn Marco frowned. Either way, what the bird did do was shake his head.

"What? You think I'm wrong?" he asked, annoyed. "He also mentioned something about Quirrell's 'hocus-pocus'. We think it's some spell Quirrell put there and Snape wants to get rid of it. Looks like Quirrell's the only thing standing in Snape's way to get the stone, and that's-"

Whatever Harry had been about to say was cut off by a wing colliding with his head.

"WHAT?!" the boy exclaimed, both hands covering the spot because that had _hurt_. Hurt as in Harry would have a lump as proof of the blow.

Marco was in the air, flapping his winds at a speed Harry knew was way faster than the one he needed to keep in place and vigorously shaking his head.

"What was that for?" he growled. Marco just kept shaking his head. "You think there's something more than Quirrell holding Snape back?" More head shaking. "Then _what_?"

But Marco just shook his head and, when Harry didn't guess what he meant, the bird flew over to the blackboard, but there was no chalk anywhere.

Had Marco been trying to_ write_?

Harry scoffed.

_Yeah, sure_.

**To be continued**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Magical creatures and artefacts**

Despite all their worrying, nothing happened and things continued on their normal routine. Or they would have if Hermione hadn't decided to go crazy over the need to study for exams, _before the Easter holidays_, and nagged at Harry and Ron to do the same. Harry's time was divided between classes, Quidditch practices, studying in the library with Ron and Hermione and hiding in the classroom. At least Marco, for all his worrying, didn't seem to care that Harry studied or not.

Harry had begun to borrow wizards' games from his friends and take them to the classroom because that was the only time he could really relax and just play. He had gleefully thought he could teach Marco chess and win —because Ron always beat him— and was thoroughly surprised —and, let's admit it, annoyed and humiliated— when Marco beat his ass in the first attempt. Just great, now he lost even to birds.

Chess wasn't his thing, it seemed. Marco was good with cards, too, but at least with those Harry didn't lose every single time.

And then, to break the monotony of Harry's life, Hagrid got himself a dragon.

Hermione had been scandalized when they saw the dragon egg, Ron had been somewhere between worried and resigned and Harry... he _had_ tried to join his friends in their worry, he really had. But, seriously, a _dragon_. That was just too awesome.

Hermione hadn't been pleased when he had let that particular thought slip, but Hagrid had been delighted to tell Harry about dragons —not everything he knew, because Hagrid knew a lot and they hadn't had enough time, but enough that Harry now thought the little guy in the egg would be _great_ once it was born.

When Harry had begun to ditch study sessions in favour of visiting Hagrid and the little egg, Hermione had been even _less_ pleased, but pondering about what Hagrid knew about that particular species of dragons —a Norwegian Ridgeback—, what would be necessary to take care of it and how it would grow beat studying at any time.

Harry had weighed the pros and cons of telling Marco about the dragon egg, as the phoenix had a temper —just ask Harry's head— and worried way too much. He finally decided to tell, taking a book with him to try and block any possible blows, and was surprised when the bird didn't get mad. From then on, Harry gave Marco frequent reports on the dragon, as Hermione glared at him every time he started to excitedly talk about it.

But, really, _a dragon_... He couldn't wait.

The day Hagrid wrote a note saying it was hatching, Ron, who had only sporadically joined in Harry's excitement up to that point, tried to help Harry convince Hermione to skip Herbology to go see the egg, but she won the argument and the visit was adjourned to their morning break.

They arrived just in time to see it hatch. It was such a little thing it was hard to imagine how it would be when grown up. Harry couldn't wait.

And, of course, Draco Malfoy had been spying on them and saw it.

_Fuck._

* * *

Unfortunately, the combination of Malfoy's nasty smile the following days and the fact that Norbert —it was better than _Fluffy_, at least— was growing at an astounding speed, meant Hagrid, and Harry, had to give in to Hermione's insistence and agree that keeping Norbert wasn't a viable thing to do.

That Ron had a dragon handler brother came in handy to formulate a plan to get the little dragon —which already breathed fire!— out of the school without getting Hagrid in trouble.

It was a pity, really, because Harry truly liked Norbert. He had decided, during his brief time with the dragon, that the fire breathing creatures were some of the most amazing magical animals. Aside from phoenixes, of course. Ron disagreed. The same day they received Charlie Weasley's, the dragon handler, answer about the dragon, said dragon bit Ron, and his friend decided he didn't like the little guy all that much anymore. Hermione, of course, though she had nothing against _Norbert_ specifically, had opposed the whole situation from the beginning, and was glad to have finally found a way to put an end to it.

That was probably the only reason why she agreed to the very stupid plan to carry the dragon up to the Astronomy Tower with the invisibility cloak on Saturday night.

And it had to be her to accompany Harry, because Ron seemed to have caught an infection due to Norbert's bite and was confined to the Hospital Wing until it healed.

Of course, as Harry's luck seemed to be on vacation since the school year had begun, Malfoy discovered their plan.

Right after handing Norbert over to Charlie's friends —Harry's eyes might or might have not misted over with tears— the dark haired boy revised his opinion on his luck: it wasn't on vacation, it was out to get him in trouble. There was no other explanation as to why they could have been so stupid to forget the invisibility cloak in the Astronomy Tower and be caught by Filch, who had gleefully brought them to McGonagall's office.

Earlier that night, Harry and Hermione had seen Professor McGonagall catch Malfoy when the blond Slytherin had been waiting for them to catch them in the act. Much to Harry's horror, Malfoy wasn't the only one who had apparently known about their escapade. Poor Neville had heard the story, too, and had tried to warn them, thus joining the happy parade of first years on detention.

They had also lost a ton of points. Harry didn't particularly care —the system point was stupid, even if he _was_ a competitive guy. Hermione, however, could have passed out when they lost them, and Neville had turned so white Harry had feared the boy would never recover his normal skin tone.

Harry didn't mind much the scorn he received from almost the entirety of the school after the debacle with the points, it was nothing in comparison to how the boy in his dreams had grown up and that thought made it easy to ignore. Besides, Ron stood by him, despite how much he hated Slytherin —now first of the competition— and, surprisingly, Marco hadn't scolded him either. Truth be told, the bird had pointed to a chair as soon as Harry entered the classroom the first day and there, sitting innocently, was his invisibility cloak. The boy was convinced now that Marco had followed them when they went to give Norbert away.

After that day, Harry found himself with an unexpected amount of free time. He hadn't realized how much time he spent talking to his classmates and housemates, but now that nobody talked to him he had all that time to himself. Hermione spent even more time now studying and Harry, who felt sorry that she —who had been against keeping Norbert in the school from the start— was having such a hard time, made it a point not to miss any study sessions. He spent more of them than he bothered to count doodling, but he was there, just as Ron did, to make sure Hermione wouldn't get distracted and go in a tangent on how it would be impossible to recover all those points and how they might have been expelled and would be if something like that ever happened again.

To keep Hermione's mind at ease, Harry promised not to wander at night or do anything to break the rules, and he had been doing nicely until a week before the exams, when he was sorely tempted. He overheard a terrified Quirrell agreeing to do something before fleeing in what was a hairs' breath away from being a sobbing mess and, though there had been no one in the room where Quirrell had been, said room had another door that had been ajar, and Harry was sure Snape had left through there.

Apparently, Marco disagreed, as the multiple, furious pecks Harry received on the head proved.

That bird could be really weird sometimes. Or, perhaps, Marco was just trying to tell him not to stick his nose in the Philosopher's Stone affair.

That had to be it.

* * *

They were going to the Forbidden Forest.

If Hermione hadn't been so busy being scared, she would have scolded Harry for looking so gleeful. Filch sure had given him a weird look when he smiled at the news. Harry had no doubt the man had informed him of it in hopes of terrifying him —just as the other three were.

Harry had completely forgotten about his resolve from the first day to go explore the forest, what with his new magical life and all that. He remembered his decision of staying out of trouble, of course he did, but now he had a sanctioned reason to go into the forest. He could do some exploring and no one would scold him for it, he only had to be careful to stick to Hagrid's instructions. That would be easy, he knew his friend well enough to know the man would be happy to answer all of his questions and, this being his first visit, everything would be new to him, which meant Harry didn't have to sneak away to discover new things in the forest.

Harry had the presence of mind to wrap a comforting arm around Hermione's shoulders and barely suppress his excitement. He was supposed to be punished, and it wouldn't do for someone to think he should go back because this didn't seem much of a punishment to him and instead have him do something boring like cleaning trophies. Again.

It wasn't hard to sober up once Hagrid told them what they were to do. Something was attacking unicorns, and they had to find a hurt unicorn. Harry had read about them, and he thought they were cool. It didn't sound right that something was hunting them.

Suddenly, it didn't feel so right to pester Hagrid with questions about the forest. He would leave that for later.

* * *

"... and then the thing, whatever it was, appeared again. It didn't see us, and went to the unicorn to, well, drink its blood." Marco interrupted with a soft cry and Harry nodded, grimacing. "Yeah, I know it keeps you alive but curses you. Who would want that? And killing others to get it? I'd like to kick its ass. Though I guess at first I'd have to figure out how to avoid that pain in the head." The phoenix inclined his head to the side in question. "Oh, right, that. You see, we were watching when that idiot Malfoy, when the thing started to drink the unicorn's blood, screamed and ran off, Fang with him. Then the thing saw me and, when I think our eyes would've met if it wasn't for the cloak, I got the pain. It was like my head was being slit open or something."

Harry rubbed his forehead in remembrance and took a gulp of the bottle of water he had brought with him.

"One of the centaurs —you know, like the cryptic guys we'd seen earlier— saved me. It wasn't one of the two from earlier. His name was Firenze, and didn't seem as stuck up as the others. Not very popular, either, if the scolding he got from one of the others was anything to go by. I like him better than the others."

Again, Marco gave him that questioning look, and Harry sighed. This was the real reason why he was telling the phoenix the story, sharing his experience aside. He needed to talk about it with someone aside from Ron and Hermione, and Marco was a good listener most of the time.

"He didn't use these words, but Firenze basically told me that the _thing_ was fucking Voldemort, who apparently wants the Stone so he can brew that Elixir of life and return."

Harry wasn't sure what reaction he had been expecting exactly, but at least some show of surprise from his bird friend. That Marco didn't so much as chirp utterly confused him.

"What? You don't get it? Snape doesn't want the Stone for himself, he's trying to get it for Voldemort."

The boy knew Marco was a very human-like bird, but he still felt somewhat surprised every time the phoenix did something that looked wrong for a bird to do. This time, however, when the bird did that scoff-like gesture of his, Harry was too busy becoming annoyed to be bothered.

"What? You _still_ don't believe me?"

Marco flapped his wings, shook his head and Harry abruptly stood up.

"Damn it, Marco! What more proof do you need?!"

The bird flew up from the desk, trilling repeatedly, and still shaking his head. Harry growled.

"I don't know why I bother," he snapped, turning to the door.

Marco flew after him, but Harry swat him away with a hand.

"Forget it, Marco. I got exams next week."

* * *

A combined state of worry and anger wasn't a good way to sit through exams, and, deep down, Harry knew the only reason he didn't completely mess them up were the long hours spent studying with Ron and Hermione. He was too distracted to acknowledge that fact, though.

He had been so stressed, he hadn't even found the humour in his Charms practical exam when professor Flitwick told him to make a pineapple tap dance across the desk it was on. In fact, Harry had gotten in an even worse mood at the sight of the pineapple, being reminded of Marco —even if it was the human one— and the fruit found its end against the floor when it toppled over the edge of the table halfway through the dance.

It didn't help, either, that Harry had nightmares. There was the hooded figure dripping unicorn blood in a couple of times, but what he saw the most was a dark, dank cell where the boy was chained to a wall with an amount of metal that probably weighed more than he did. Sometimes Jinbe —a fishman that appeared often in the dreams after the boy became a pirate, especially when he was part of the Whitebeard Pirates— was there, and others he wasn't. Other people he couldn't see yelled insults at him many times, and it took Harry four nights to learn where that cell was.

Impel Down, level six. The impenetrable prison.

It looked like he had discovered why he had never dreamt past the boy being twenty: it didn't seem he had grown older than that.

* * *

Harry thought about sneaking out to the classroom, see if Marco was there and tell him they were going to try to prevent Snape from stealing the Stone, but pushed the idea away as soon as it came. Marco was unreasonable when it came to Snape and the stone, and Harry didn't want to risk the bird attempting to stop him. It wasn't as if they had seen each other lately, Marco probably hadn't even been to the classroom in days.

But he was _sure_ Snape would attempt to steal the Stone tonight. Because they had just discovered Hagrid told the man who gave him Norbert's egg how to get past Fluffy —and here Harry thought nothing would shadow the fondness he felt when he thought of little Norbert— and Dumbledore wasn't in the school. Of course, McGonagall —who had told them about Dumbledore— refused to believe the Stone was in danger, and that left the responsibility to them.

As they had nothing to do while they waited for night to arrive, Harry spent the time fretting. He thought of everything that would go wrong if Voldemort got the Stone, which brought him to think of everything he knew the man had done in the past, which in turn resulted in him thinking of how Voldemort had killed his parents, preventing him from even remembering them, from having a normal childhood, leaving him stuck with the Dursleys.

By the time they were to leave, Harry was in a positively bad mood.

* * *

A strangling plant and some beautiful fire, a flying key and a game of chess that hadn't gone so well —because Harry's luck couldn't have come back in full— and an already dead troll later, found Harry and Hermione standing in a small chamber, both doors blocked by magical fire, before a table lined with potions and a logic puzzle Hermione had just deciphered. Two doors behind, unconscious after having been hurt to win the chess game with the giant wizarding pieces whose violence didn't seem too fun to Harry anymore, was Ron.

The problem now was, the bottle that would allow them to cross to the next room was too small for the two of them to drink.

"Which one will get you back through the purple flames?"

Hermione didn't look amused at his wording, but pointed at a rounded bottle at the right end of the line. A little of logic, however, served to convince her. Harry knew he wouldn't be able to defeat Snape, much less Voldemort, and thus needed help. That, combined with the fact that Ron should be seen by Madam Pomfrey, helped to get Hermione to agree to take Ron with her. Not without an awkward hug first. Harry wasn't used to hugs, they hadn't exactly been common in his life. If he had to be honest, Hermione was the first human to hug him that he could remember.

Once he was alone and before drinking the potion, Harry took a moment to berate himself for never doing that training he had thought he needed earlier in the year. It wouldn't have hurt to check some offensive magic, either.

He drank the potion, marched into the flames and let out a loud, unflattering expletive when, in the other side of the fire, he saw professor Quirrell.

_Well, this explains Marco's behavior._ Was the ridiculous thought that crossed Harry's disconcerted mind.

"Language, Potter," the man said, too calm to Harry's liking. "I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here." The man wasn't stuttering.

_What the-? Asshole_. Of course. What was better to commit a crime than having everybody think you were too stupid and useless to do it? Everything Harry had witnessed relating the Stone so far came back to mind and, with this new information, the boy felt like a real idiot. It looked like _Snape_ was the only one not fooled by Quirrell. There was only one thing that didn't make sense. Unless…

"_You_ tried to kill me at the Quidditch match, not Snape."

"Exactly, and I would have succeeded if Severus hadn't been casting a counter spell." After that, Quirrell went on about how Hermione had knocked him over, and then to explain how Snape's efforts to _save_ Harry —and wasn't that a difficult concept to wrap one's head around?— had been in vain.

The boy only half listened, not interested in the boasting of someone so obviously full of himself and busy trying to find a way to earn time for someone to come. It didn't sound very likely, now that Harry thought of it, as Dumbledore was out of the school, but at least that way he would earn some time to think of a way out. That second part looked more complicated. Maybe he could get Quirrell to talk himself to death? The guy seemed to like it, he probably wanted to make up for all the speech opportunities lost due to his fake stutter.

Being wrapped in ropes that appeared out of nowhere did draw Harry's attention back to Quirrell. That ruled out some of the possible plans to escape. Talking would have to do for now.

It was only after another ramble, this time about the troll back in Halloween, that the man seemed to decide he had heard enough of his own voice for now.

"Now, wait quietly, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror."

It was only then that Harry noticed the Mirror of Erised standing behind Quirrell. It took all of his effort not to look at it directly, and instead he concentrated on Quirrell who, it seemed, still hadn't had enough of talking.

Getting the man to talk even more proved ridiculously easy. That was how Harry found out the story behind the forest incident —just that the attempt at intimidation had been for the opposite reason than he believed— and that, yes, this bastard worked for Voldemort. He also learned, on a less Stone-relevant note, that Snape had gone to school with his father and they hated each others' guts. It was something to think about, what was so bad to hate Harry so much after so many years. At a later date, he had a psycho Voldemort follower attempting to steal the Philosopher's Stone to take care of right now.

And then Harry discovered the one in the classroom with Quirrell the other day was _Voldemort_. So much for Hogwarts being the safest place in the wizarding world.

Quirrell went back to mumbling about the mirror and the Stone and, with a sinking feeling, Harry realized the clue to find it must be inside the mirror, which required _looking_ at it. Which Harry felt he couldn't do. He didn't feel strong enough to face _that_ illusion again and, even if for some miracle he did, what if he found the way to reach the Stone or, worse yet, the Stone himself? That would make it even easier for Quirrell to obtain it.

No way was Harry looking again into that damn mirror.

"What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, Master!" Quirrell spoke again to himself. Or so Harry thought.

"Use the boy … Use the boy …" If it wasn't for the ropes, said boy would have jumped back, startled.

Quirrell turned Harry. His eyes had a mad glint in them, none of the previous cool demeanor remaining. The man clapped his hands, the ropes disappeared and, before he could think of what was going on, Harry jumped to his feet.

"Come here," Quirrell said. "Look in the mirror and tell me what you see."

"Like hell," Harry snapped, and took a defiant step back. He wasn't getting anywhere near the mirror.

"What?" Quirrell's voice came out loud, breathy and disbelieving.

"I'm not obeying you."

Quirrell's eyes opened, he seemed to take in a quick, deep breath and his face was the reflection of anger. Desperate anger. It wasn't, however, him who spoke.

"Make him…" said the voice from before.

Harry's reflexes from years of fighting bullies and idiots kicked in and he moved out of the way in time to dodge Quirrell, who had gone for a physical approach instead of a magical one in his attempt to capture Harry. Next, Quirrell brought his wand out, and Harry threw himself to the floor to avoid the spell sent his way. He couldn't get his own wand out of his pocket before he had to roll to the side to dodge the next spell.

"Stop running, Potter!"

"Yeah, sure!" He threw himself to the opposite side this time and then, not as startling as before, that disembodied voice spoke once more.

"Let me speak to him … face to face. …"

Surprisingly, Quirrell stopped his attacks, but Harry didn't take his eyes away from the man's wand.

"Master, you are not strong enough!"

"I have strength enough … for this. …"

When, however, Quirrell returned his wand to one of his robes' pockets and raised both hands to unwrap his turban, Harry watched closely, both puzzled and apprehensive of what the man was doing.

Then Quirrell turned, and Harry would have thrown up had he eaten recently. Because, instead of the back of his head, the man had a face. A second face that didn't quite look like a face; lacking a nose, so pale it probably had never been touched by the sun and with bright, glaring red eyes.

He almost made a quip.

"Harry Potter…" said the second face, who, Harry guessed, was Voldemort. "See what I have become? Mere shadow and vapor… I have form only when I can share another's body… but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds… Unicorn blood has strengthened me these past weeks… you saw faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the forest… and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own… Now… why don't you look into that mirror?"

Harry took a step back, eyes darting to the entrance.

"Don't be a fool," snarled Voldemort. "Better save your own life and join me… or you'll meet the same end as your parents… They died begging me for mercy…"

And that was as far as Harry's self-preservation instinct went. Growling, he charged at Quirrell, who wasn't far from him, and, as the man's back was to him and apparently Voldemort didn't control the body, neither of them reacted in time to dodge Harry or the fist that slammed right into Voldemort's disfigured face.

Harry screamed in pain, the same feeling from back at the forest stabbing him from his scar, and it took him a moment to register Voldemort's shriek, paired with a howl from Quirrell. The professor stumbled forward at the same time as Harry took a step back, a hand up pressed against his forehead.

Voldemort's previously white face had now a blistering red mark where the boy's fist had impacted, and the man was hissing, his mouth contorted into an even uglier sneer.

"Seize him! SEIZE HIM!" shrieked Voldemort.

In a swift movement, Quirrell turned around and lunged at Harry at a surprising speed. Instinct kicking in, Harry raised both hands and shoved them at the man's face. Quirrell howled again and Harry, teeth biting his lips so hard he could taste blood, moved his hands down the professor's neck and wrapped them —as best as he could— around it.

Voldemort was now ordering Quirrell to kill Harry, but the man couldn't obey, hands flailing and trying to pry the boy's away from his neck, pulling back as they were burned on contact just to try again once more.

The pain in Harry's head grew as the time passed, his eyes lost focus, and it was all a blaze of pain and screams.

Quirrell's neck disappeared from between his hands and adrenaline was no longer enough to keep him up. Harry fell, and something… an arm, strong, comforting and familiar, wrapped around him.

"Ace!"

**To be continued**

* * *

I know I have modified the scene at the stone chamber a lot (and that Harry didn't get to hear some information because of that), but can any of you seriously imagine this Harry acting as canon Harry did in there? Besides, I'm not too sure he would have been able to obtain the stone. He might have no interest in eternal life, but Ace was a pirate I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Also, without the whole stone part, the scene happened faster than it did in the books.


End file.
